Donald Trump may be leaving, but the flames he fanned burn ever brighter

For almost as long as the real-world horror show of 2020 has been playing out in the United States, President Donald Trump has been promising that his country is “turning the corner.”

And finally, entering the last month of the year, the bend in the road is actually visible on the horizon: multiple COVID vaccines are on the way; a new president has won the election; both of those changes raise the hope for sustained economic recovery.

Many Americans have been breathing a deep sigh of relief at the prospect of a smoother and less dangerous road ahead. Canadians who have been anxious that the raging flames of their neighbour’s dumpster fire might cross the property line and burn their own house down may well be ready to relax.

But like a Toronto Maple Leafs fan celebrating a three-goal lead in a playoff elimination game, the justified optimism, upon quick reflection, gives way to the realization that the hardest part may still lie ahead. Everyone can see there is light at the end of the tunnel — bright light, yes — but the road to reach it appears bumpier and more dangerous than the horrifying path already travelled.

The analogies may seem trite given the real-life tragedy that’s unfolding. As Canadians know all too well in an era of soaring caseloads and renewed lockdowns, COVID isn’t done with us yet. And too many Americans are learning that in the hardest way. this week are four times higher than they were during the previous devastating peak of the summer. Over 100,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID, more than 20,000 in ICU units. Every state in the country is seeing increasing COVID deaths. On Thursday alone, 2,857 Americans died from it: a record high that is within 150 deaths of the number who perished on Sept. 11, 2001. In the weeks ahead, Americans might now expect a 9/11-scale loss of life every single day from the coronavirus.

President-elect Joe Biden has been working to communicate this horror and danger to the public: late last month he urged people (apparently with limited success) to stay isolated for the Thanksgiving holiday, on Thursday he proposed a voluntary mask mandate for the whole country for the first 100 days of his administration and confirmed he was keeping on Dr. Anthony Fauci in an elevated role.

But Biden is not president yet: the inauguration is not until Jan. 20. In the meantime, the man he’ll be replacing remains busy, apparently ignoring COVID, and working to sabotage Biden’s chances of success as president. Most famously by rejecting the election results and continuing to baselessly attack the integrity of the election, making the of his sizable number of supporters.

But that isn’t all of it: Trump has been who he sees as disloyal to him, to permanent administration staff jobs, , as many death-row inmates as possible, international and boxing in and to cement his own priorities, furiously , rolling back — just for starters.

A majority of Americans indicated in the election they were done with Trump, but he’s showing vividly that he isn’t done with them. In his final month and a half in office, he’s likely not just to continue loudly objecting to Biden’s victory, but doing as much as he can to make Biden’s presidency difficult.

Nowhere is this more evident than confronting the ongoing economic crisis that has accompanied the COVID pandemic’s devastation. Trump’s treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin recently placed more than $450 million in unspent COVID emergency lending dollars in an account that would make it inaccessible to Biden’s administration without further congressional authorization. It’s a move Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said was an attempt to “” ahead of Biden’s inauguration.

That comes as the outgoing Congress has been deadlocked on further economic relief measures, and as existing relief packages are set to dry up. Some members of Congress (and Trump) have pointed to upticks in job numbers though the last half of the year and decent stock market index prices as signs the economy continues to recover. But jobs never recovered to anywhere close to their pre-pandemic heights, and the most recent report shows the recovery stalling. With COVID surging to record highs, the economy is set to suffer further: as economist Daniel Zhao Friday, “Ultimately, the virus is in the driver’s seat. The virus is what determines the trajectory of the recovery.” Meanwhile, roughly 12 million people are set to see their unemployment benefits expire on the day after Christmas.

By Thursday, crafted by a bipartisan group of rank-and-file members of Congress (one scaled back dramatically from earlier Democratic proposals) appeared to have enough support to pass before a Dec. 11 deadline.

Friday, Democratic House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi with vaccines on the way and Biden set to take over as president, said she was optimistic about “a new dynamic” that would “make all the difference in the world.” She said the compromise to keep the economy going — to put food on tables and pay bills for desperate people — appeared to her and to Biden as “at best, just a start.” But it was, she said, “a path forward” to get the country to a vaccine and a new president.

There is a light visible at the end of the tunnel. But finding a path to get to it without drastically more suffering and conflict may be as hard for Americans as anything that’s come before.

Edward Keenan is the Star’s Washington Bureau chief. He covers U.S. politics and current affairs. Reach him via email: